DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israel said it carried out an attack in Syria on a group targeting members of a minority sect as a new round of clashes left at least 11 people dead, most of them members of the country’s security forces. DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israel said it carried out an attack in Syria on a group targeting members of a minority sect as a new round of clashes left at least 11 people dead, most of them members of the country’s security forces. The clashes on the edge of the town of Sahnaya, south of the capital Damascus, came a day after a heavy exchange of fire between pro-government gunmen and Druze fighters left 10 people dead in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana. A statement released by the office of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli military carried out a warning operation and attacked “an extremist group that was organizing to continue attacking the Druze population” in Sahnaya. It did not give details about the warning operation. The Israeli statement added that “a serious message was also conveyed to the Syrian regime” adding that Israel expects it to act to prevent harm to the Druze. On March 1, Israel’s Defense Ministry said the military had been instructed to prepare to defend Jaramana, asserting that the minority it has vowed to protect was “under attack” by Syrian forces. The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. Over half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. The Syrian Information Ministry said in a statement that 11 members of the country’s security forces were killed in two separate attacks adding that others were wounded triggering the clashes. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said 13 people were killed, of whom 11 were members of the security forces while two were Druze residents of Sahnaya. It added that government forces are sending reinforcements toward Sahnaya. The Associated Press